Re: License question about cygwin

[Christopher Faylor <cgf-idd at cygwin dot com>]

On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 04:46:24PM -0400, Bill C Riemers wrote:
>The answer isn't quite that simple.  The correct answer, is that it depends
>on the details of what you are doing.  I could go into more details, but
>this topic has already been moderated once.  It would be inappropriate for
>me to discuss it again on this list.
>
>If you wish to discuss it privately, feel free to e-mail me directly at
>docbill@freeshell.org.

I am not sure why you are offering private advice on this.  It would
seem that you are setting yourself up as an expert here, which is pretty
dangerous.  The bottom line is that if you want to be sure that your use
of cygwin jives with the GPL and with Red Hat's licensing, your best bet
is to either consult a lawyer or maybe consult Red Hat itself.
Obviously Red Hat's opinions may suffer from some bias but you could at
least be sure that you won't receive a letter from a lawyer if you come
to the joint conclusion that your use of cygwin and its DLLs is
acceptable.

Arm chair opinions on this topic are quite popular.  Sometimes they are
wrong.  Sometimes they are right.  Sometimes they laughably argue
rationales and reasons for why Red Hat licenses things the way they do.
I even saw one expression of outrage that Red Hat should charge for this
at all, the argument being that Red Hat did not develop most of the
code!  Huh?

Anyway, as I seem to need to be saying on a weekly basis, discussions of
the GPL are best handled elsewhere.  Discussions of Red Hat's licenses
are best discussed with Red Hat.  If you don't agree with either of
those two statements, well, then gee.  Here's where I get to be mean.

cgf

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